The Bone Yard (29 page)

Grey, freezing morning that stung my eyes and laid waste to my circulation a couple of minutes after I went up on deck. Straight ahead of us stood the great rectangular block of the power station, stark and incongruous against the snow-covered fields behind. I looked through the binoculars Harry had handed me. The concrete end walls were heavily discoloured but between them bright yellow sheeting covered the entire extent of the central façade.

“Not much sign of damage,” Davie muttered.

“Obviously they had to cover it up,” Katharine said. “People in the tourist planes would soon have noticed if the place had blown up.”

I nodded. “They must have rerouted them inland until they fixed the sheeting. But still  . . .” I lowered the bins and rubbed my chin. “If there had been any serious radiation leak, monitors abroad would have picked it up. Not every country in Europe's as chaotic as this island.”

Katharine moved nearer, running her lower arms along the rusty deckrail. “What are you getting at, Quint?”

I shrugged. “Maybe it was very localised. Maybe the reactor core wasn't affected.”

Davie stood up straight and breathed in deeply, then thought better of it. “Christ, is the air safe around here?”

“I've been in this area dozens of times since the fireworks,” Harry shouted from above, then bellowed out a laugh. “Do I look any the worse for it?”

Katharine and I exchanged glances.

“I'm not going any closer though,” the big man continued. “So make the most of it.”

We did. I scanned the high wire fencing. Yellow signs with the nuclear symbol had been hung every few yards. The fencing extended all the way along the pier which had given the only access to the power station. The Edinburgh land border is miles away and the technicians had to come by boat in the early years of the Enlightenment.

“Quint, what's that?” Katharine had grabbed my arm hard. “Over there by the gate.”

I looked through the bins again. Surely not. The words I'd first heard William McEwan use to the senior guardian leaped up like one of the traps laid by the Viet Cong to skewer foot-soldiers in the jungle. It looked like Torness really was the Bone Yard. The unmistakable components of a human skeleton, completely bare of all remnants of flesh and clothing and splayed out in the shape of a St Andrew's cross, were clinging to the densely strung wire.

On the way back to Leith, Harry told us he reckoned the skeleton had been put there to scare dissidents or any other interested parties away from the power station. Maybe they were meant to think the fence was electrified, though there hadn't been much juice coming out of that edifice recently. The Science and Energy Directorate had apparently deserted the place completely. Left it and whatever nuclear nastiness was in it to the east wind and the fauna of what used to be East Lothian.

It was nearly dark by the time Harry navigated his pride and joy back into the Enlightenment Dock. I decided against reminding him to keep quiet about our trip.

“Good luck to you, Davie,” he said as we started slithering up the frozen gangplank. “And to you, hard woman. Pity we didn't get the chance to see you fight.” He let out a restrained roar. “I'm not wishing you luck, citizen Quint. You're way, way beyond the realms of luck.”

I raised a finger to the daft bugger. He was right though. Even if I'd found the Bone Yard, I hadn't got anything to use against the senior guardian. Let alone the madman who'd been practising his butchery skills in the city.

“What are we going to do now?” Katharine asked as we got into the Land-Rover.

“Aye, what next, Quint?” said Davie.

“Stop ganging up on me, will you?” I yelled, burying my hands in my pockets and sinking my chin down on to the jacket that had done such a bad job of keeping the sea air out. I'd suddenly found myself thinking of Roddie Aitken. That was making me feel as blue as Mississippi Fred McDowall when he sang “Standing at the Burial Ground”.

Chapter Eighteen

We headed down Ferry Road towards Trinity. I wanted to call in at the retirement home to let my old man know I was all right. On the way I turned my mobile back on. Less than a minute passed before Hamilton was on my case.

“Dalrymple? Where the hell have you been?” His voice was tense.

“What's happened?” My heart missed a beat as the idea that the killer had struck again hit me.

“Nothing's happened, man.” That couldn't be right. He sounded like a ferret had crawled into his auxiliary-issue long johns. “I've been ringing your number every half-hour and getting unobtainable.”

“Oh.” I tried to play it cool. “I've been checking out various archives. I forgot I'd turned it off.”

“And where's Hume 253? I haven't been able to raise him either. What have you been doing with that ‘ask no questions' I issued? I suppose you think I was born yesterday.” With his heavy beard, he'd have been a big draw in the infirmary's neo-natal ward. “Anyway, what have you got to report at tonight's Council meeting?”

That was a good question. I turned the question back on him while I scrabbled around for something to fob his colleagues off with. Unfortunately he had even less than I did. It was going to be a fun evening.

We were in luck. The senior guardian was preoccupied – I'd like to have known what with – and let Hamilton and me off the hook.

I went back to the flat and found Katharine asleep on the sofa. Her face wasn't tense like it was when she was awake and she looked much younger. I put my hand out and, without touching her, moved it slowly downwards above her short hair and the contours of her cheek and jaw. I had a sudden flash of her as she straddled me in my armchair a couple of years ago, her neck taut as she simultaneously forced herself down on me and bent her upper body back. The fact that I hadn't attended a sex session for nearly a fortnight suddenly became very apparent.

Then I heard someone begin to pound up the stair in archetypal guard fashion. So did Katharine. She was instantly awake, sitting up and at the ready. Her face was lined again, the moment of repose gone.

Davie shouldered open the door, carrying a large movable feast in both hands. “Guess what I've got here,” he said, looking pleased with himself.

“Rations stolen from ordinary citizens?” Katharine asked with a sour smile.

“Shut up, will you?” I hissed, stuffing a tape of Council-approved folk music into my machine. I didn't want anyone to hear what we were about to discuss, let alone notice that I'd acquired a non-paying lodger who featured on the Deserters Register.

“You don't have to have any of it if your heavy-duty moral scruples get in the way,” Davie said to Katharine.

That was it. I'd had it with them. “You're a pair of tossers,” I shouted. “We've got our noses in all sorts of forbidden places and all you two can do is take the piss out of each other.” I gave them the sulphuric acid glare I inherited from my mother. I've practised it a lot less than she did but it seemed to get through to them. “I'm not joking. Either give me some decent back-up or fuck off out the door.”

They both looked pretty sheepish.

“So what have you got there, Davie?” I asked after a strained silence.

“Em, right, there's a pot of barracks stew, with decent meat in it “—he poked around in the dark brown contents of a cast-iron pan—” well, semi-decent meat.”

Katharine's nose twitched dubiously.

“And wholemeal bread,” Davie continued, “barracks beer, apple crumble and – wait for it – real cream.”

“Real cream?” Katharine leaned forward, an interested expression on her face. “Where did you get that?”

“What's it to you?” Davie looked affronted. “You reckon I took this—”

“You remember where the door is, don't you, guardsman?” I said, burning him with the acid look again.

He glanced over his shoulder then sat down at the table. “It came from the guard kitchens,” he muttered. “If it's any business of—”

“I'm not joking, Davie,” I yelled.

We settled down to eat to the strains of bagpipes and fiddles. It could have been worse. At least there weren't any accordions.

“Right, team, we have to talk.” I pushed my plate away and emptied my glass of barracks heavy.

Katharine took the armchair, leaving Davie to join me on the sofa. “It's about time we sorted things out, Quint,” she said. “I haven't got a clue what we're doing and I don't think you have either.”

“Thank you for that constructive opening.”

“I'd have to go along with her there, Quint,” Davie said, keeping his eyes off me.

“You as well? Now I really know who my friends are.” I pulled out my notepad and started flicking through the pages. That didn't get me much further. “Okay. Review of where we stand. The cruise on your pal Harry's floating shipwreck wasn't a complete waste of time.”

“That is reassuring,” Katharine said.

It was her turn for the vitriolic look. “We've got confirmation that something disastrous happened at the power station near the end of 2019.”

“Aye, but what's that got to do with these murders?” Davie said, opening his arms wide like a drunken tourist who's forgotten where his hotel is.

“That's the difficult bit.” I drew a square on my pad, wrote “Torness” in it then sketched in the coastline. “How far's your farm from the power station again, Katharine?”

“About ten miles, I suppose. We never go that way because of the—”

“Because of the gangs,” I interrupted. “In particular, because of the gang led by the headcase known as the Screecher?”

She nodded. “So?”

“So maybe the Screecher got nosy and took a trip over the fence.”

“In which case, either they were his bones on the wire,” said Davie, “or he glows in the dark.”

“He might have sent one of his minions in,” I said.

Katharine leaned forward and nodded her head. “He had a nuclear physicist in his gang, remember? Maybe the Screecher found him at the power station.”

“Maybe,” I said. “And maybe the Screecher used what he learned from him to put the squeeze on someone in the Council. By threatening to spread the word about the explosions.”

Davie's hand came down hard on my knee. “Don't piss about, Quint. We all know the senior guardian's the most likely person to have had the squeeze put on him – Science and Energy is his directorate. Are you sure about this?”

“No,” I said with a hollow laugh. “Except there are those files missing from the directorate archive. The ones you know who's probably got in his private library.”

Katharine sat back, shaking her head. “Even if you sneaked a look at them, they wouldn't necessarily show any link to what's been going on in the last couple of months.”

“True enough.” I flicked through the pages again. This time I felt a couple of twinges. The first had to do with the toxicologist, but I let that one go for the moment. The second was much more pressing. Roddie Aitken had just made another appearance in my thoughts.

“What have you come up with?” Davie asked.

“Is it that obvious?”

“You're smirking like a kid who's got off border duty by playing with himself during his assessment.”

Katharine yawned. “I'd have thought that would get him a permanent transfer into the City Guard.”

“Children,” I said, glaring them into submission. “Answer me this. As outlined in the manual I wrote for the directorate, what's the basic rule of investigating practice?”

Davie scratched his beard. “Always triangulate data?” he suggested without much confidence.

“Wrong, guardsman,” Katharine said with a superior smile. “Always compare initial evidence and statements with subsequent data.” It was a long time since she'd done her auxiliary training, but what I wrote in the
Public Order in Practice
manual seemed to have stuck.

“Very good. Unfortunately I haven't been following my own instructions.”

“Meaning what?” Davie demanded, pissed off that a demoted auxiliary who was also a deserter had shown him up.

“Meaning that, in all this chaos, we've forgotten about the first victim.”

Now Katharine was looking puzzled. “The young man? I assumed he had something to do with the Electric Blues.”

I shook my head. “We never found any evidence of that. And he definitely didn't strike me as a drug trafficker.”

Davie got up and went back to the table. What was left of the apple crumble did a disappearing act. “Me neither,” he mumbled with his mouth full.

“What are you saying, Quint?” Katharine asked.

“I'm saying that tomorrow morning we hit the Delivery Department files and find out his movements over the last few weeks.”

“But I've been through those files,” Davie said.

“Yes, but we weren't particularly interested in where he'd been delivering, were we? Maybe he went somewhere that's linked with the drugs. Like, for instance, where they're produced.”